The hit bird!

It was not until I joined Zeus, did I first get on a plane. And it was with Chandrashekhar that I had the priviledge to fly my maiden flight. Now though, today's post is not about that particular flight, I might as well add a little information about it. It was our visit to ANURAG (a part of a defence lab) in Hyderabad for some project we were doing.

To tell you the truth, I am a little scared of flying, just for the plain fact that if I go down from there I am going straight up. And heights scare me. So everytime I look out of the window and see clouds, or the serpentine rivers running through green and brown patches of land, or just an irregular growth of concrete, I am awestruck and at the sametime a little scared. Turbulence just acts like a catalyst to my fear equation. And the seats are bloody uncomfortable.

But the fact remains that flights are a boon to mankind. It saves time like nothing else. Breakfast in Bombay, followed by a lunch in Calcutta and you could throw in dinner in Delhi if you are up for it. Its been a long time since I have travelled in a long distance train. Everytime I think of the amount of time I would save, my miser monster just gets pumelled into oblivion :P

This happened during one of my trips to Calcutta. I was going to visit a family friend's (Andy) wedding. I was to travel to Calcutta with his brother Sandy and cousin sister. The three of us boarded our flight to Bhubaneshwar. It was an indirect flight. Bombay to Calcutta via Bhubaneshwar. The first part of hte journey was pretty ordinary. No problems till we reached Bhubaneshwar. The fun began after that. We sat in the plane for quite sometime (I think about half an hour) before it started. I think the best part of a flight is just at take-off and at landing. That's the only exciting part. This trip had a little more excitement than usual.

Our plane had gathered quite some speed and I was just about done prepared for take-off, when there was a sudden bang followed by a sudden break (if it hadn't been for the seat belts I am sure I would have been sitting in the seat before me) and sound of screeching tires. Everything happened within a couple of seconds I guess and the plane came to a halt. The captain soon announced that it was a bird hit and that it would be sometime before we were in the sky again.

We waited for almost another half an hour when it was decided that the passengers had to disembark, so that the engineers could do a thorough check-up and the passengers were getting pretty crabby sitting inside for such  a long time. Sandy messaged Andy about the bird hit and told him to convey the news to our parents who had already reached a few days before us. Andy promptly replied, "oh damn! How's the bird feeling now?" :P

The wait was long and I hate waiting. But there was nothign else to do. So I decided to explore a bit and soon saw something interesting. The Indian Airlines suggestion box being put to good use :D

Awesome right!? I was so very amused by it. Made the whole bird hit thing totally worth it. Not so good for the bird though :P Fortunately, all the rest of my flights have been pretty normal and mundane, but that was indeed a not so normal experience :)